Despite the fact the the Defiant got them before and the Enterprise-E got them not far after Voyager was lost. what gives? And I know they got 2 tricobalt devices to "even it out"
Voyager left DS9 on stardate 48315.6 whilst the first mention of quantum torpedoes as a thing wasn't until "Defiant" which occurred on stardate 48467.3, three months after she went missing, so it could simply be that the quantums were scheduled to be issued until the beginning of June 2371. It didn't seem to be an issue, the shuttlecraft and torpedo factory they had onboard churned out more than enough photons for them over their journey home.
Imagine if Voyager had had them? The whining would still be going on about how they existed, how shiny they were, how undeserved it was that Voyager had anything that helped her navigate home. I'm kind of glad she didn't.
Guys, the only real difference is that one is red, then other blue-white (and the colours totally vary in other versions of Trek, making that a bit moot, too) They say they're more powerful but it really never made a difference. We never had a story where a quantum torpedo could specifically do something a photon torpedo couldn't. So... no biggie.
That makes me think, why did the writers even include the "We have X torpedos and no way to replace them" line? They have replicators and they have antimatter ... what more do they need to build photon torpedoes? They have unlimited energy (between the warp core and the fusion reactors it should be impossible to run out), so the shuttle and torpedo factory should have been up and running by the end of season 1. They probably could have converted one of the holodecks into a part time industrial replicator because those already use a combination of holographic, replicator and transporter technologies. So six dozen photon torpedoes could have been produced by voice command, then all they had to do was take them to engineering and load them up with some antimatter.
Next you're going to tell us it doesn't really matter Voyager had a sustainable cruise velocity of warp 9.975 or that it had bio-neuro gelpacks
That early on the crew had no idea if or how they could make their own torpedoes (and shuttles), so a warning in the heat of battle on the bridge made perfect sense. As they settled into reality they realized that starfleet ships could actually do remarkably well for years on end without a spacedock -- something that was designed into the galaxy class (indepednent missions lasting 7 years without starbase layover)
Even if these quantum torpedoes had been released just before Voyager started its mission, would they have been fitted with them as a matter of priority? After all, their mission was 'only' to find a lost Maquis ship in the badlands, which probably would be no match for Voyager anyway. (But perhaps they thought they might run into Cardassians as well?) Then again, there was even less reason for them to have these tri-cobalt devices on board....
Sorry don't buy it. It's not as if things like replicators where a new tech they had been around for a while so they knew their capabilites. And it's not as if the person who said it was fresh out of the academy one would hope their had an idea of their own ships capabilites.
Were the Enterprise-D's replicators the same first generation replicators the federation had been using for decades? Or were they generation twelve, only becoming availble the year the E-D was commissioned?
For the most part I agree, but it did seem like the Enterprise-E used it's quantums against the Borg cube to greater effect than photons.
I think the statement of not being able to produce more torpedoes was based entirely on the ship's damaged condition at the time the statement was made. Not that the ship wouldn't able to if in good repair.
^Yeah, it was said in episode 6, 'the cloud'. At that time, they probably hadn't even solved all short-term personnel problems yet, much less had had time to think about long-term sustainability problems.
It was based more on Piller and Taylor's ego that VOY wouldn't be an action show and they would make it stories by drama/character interactions and exploration alone. That went out the window as soon as the ratings started to take a dive. Funny, Jeri Taylor said the audience would find the lack of action "charming" for the movie GEN. When she became showrunner of VOY, she had Janeway in a tank top, backpack and armed with a phaser rifle, fighting large macroviruses. Life comes at you fast! In all seriousness. The torpedo limitation, as well as other things, were self-imposed limitations the writers put on themselves and then abandoned when it became inconvenient. Remember, photon torpedoes have anti-matter warheads. So, building a missile/torpedo wouldn't be the issue if you had the schematics and materials. And given Voyager's never ending supply of shuttle crafts, I say it wasn't. The rub comes from creating anti-matter to use for the warheads. Considering every shuttlecraft has a warp core, and warp cores use matter/anti-matter reactions for propulsion. I'd say the anti-matter problem was solved by VOY off-screen or rather in the writer's room.
Exactly, if they couldn't be bothered dealing with their self imposed limitions they should never have imposed them in the first place. And it would take a few seconds of dialogue to fix. Captain's Log we are on route to respully on Atraxi Prime additionally Engineering has found a way to replace our supply of torpedeos. One way says, we know our viewers will pick up on this so we address the issue and the other says our viewers are idiots and won't pick up on it.